The National Institutes of Health will allow funding for research to make some viruses more unsafe and easier to spread. On the one hand, tweaking a virus to make it more contagious might help scientists understand what lets a virus like bird flu, for example, make the jump from infecting birds to spreading among people.

Would you take a deadly pathogen like the influenza, SARS, or MERS virus and make it even deadlier?

The federal government has made a decision to lift a three-year ban on experimenting with controversial, deadly germs that have the potential to cause pandemics.

"We have a responsibility to ensure that research with infectious agents is conducted responsibly, and that we consider the potential biosafety and biosecurity risks associated with such research", Collins said in a statement posted on NIH's website.

Critics say such "gain-of-function" research still risks creating an accidental pandemic. That is, so-called "gain of function" research in pathogens may help scientists anticipate how viruses may spread and evolve, and therefore how to stop them from leading to unmanageable pandemics.

Officials embarked on an effort to come up with a regulatory process that would weigh the risks and the benefits of experiments, with input from the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Flu elevated to 'widespread' in Ohio
As for how effective this year's vaccine will be? "We have to wait and see what happens from there", he said. Wu said they typically start to see flu cases diminish toward the end of April.

"I am not persuaded that the work is of greater potential benefit than potential harm", said molecular biologist Richard Ebright of Rutgers University, who has argued that US labs working with risky pathogens regularly suffer serious biosafety lapses.

The new regulations would allow such work, as well as other research, Collins said.

Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), said that he is most concerned about public health implications if details about the experiments become publicly available, a process which the new framework doesn't spell out.

He says his team will likely apply for approval to study the potential for certain mutations to increase how easily bird flu can be transmitted among humans, but they would study the effect of these genetic changes in weakened flu viruses and not the deadly H7N9 virus itself.

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Ingram from Nashville Soccer Holdings, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam and Megan Barry, the mayor of Nashville all in attendance. In a statement last week, MLS indicated it would continue to work with the competing cities and would have a decision soon.

According to the CNN poll , a broad 59 per cent of Americans said they disapprove of how Trump is handling his job as President. The poll released Tuesday by CNN seems to indicate that Democratic messaging on the legislation has been more successful.

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The court also imposed a fine of Rs 2 lakh on Ilyasi and ordered that Rs 10 lakh compensation be paid to Anju's parents. Illyasi had shot to fame in the 1990s for the Zee TV show India's Most Wanted , which would track criminals on the run.

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